Industrial and energy: standards and compliance

Guides in reading order

1. IEC 61508 Functional safety, customer or contractThe generic functional safety standard for systems built from electrical, electronic and programmable electronic parts that carry out safety functions. It defines an overall safety lifecycle, four safety integrity levels, requirements for hardware and software, and the management and assessment that tie them together, and it is the parent of sector standards for process plants, machinery, railways, nuclear plants and, in adapted form, road vehicles.
2. ISO 13849 Functional safety, customer or contractThe machinery standard for designing and validating the parts of a machine's control system that carry out safety functions, such as stopping on a guard opening, limiting speed or preventing unexpected start-up. It rates each safety function by a performance level, from PL a to PL e, built from the architecture category, the reliability of components, diagnostic coverage and measures against common cause failures, and it is widely used to show conformity with European machinery law.

10 more guides for registered members.